Production Diary, Day 9: Beer Math at Bartholomew Park

Every production has one continuity puzzle that haunts the script supervisor's dreams. Ours involves beer, and today it came due.

We were in the H-E-B lot on East 51st, directly across from Bartholomew District Park, for Scenes 52, 54, 55 and 56, forty-four takes on rolls A017 and A018. During the prep walkthrough, the note next to this material read, and I am paraphrasing only slightly, that the beer count continuity is brutal. Which prop is where, how full, in whose hand, in which take, across scenes that will be intercut. Our script supervisor Melisa Balderrama Siles tracked all of it with the calm of a person doing sudoku on a rollercoaster. If the cuts match in the finished film, and they will, today is why.

Today also had one of the shoot's genuine physical stunts: a piece of balance business that ends with Odie on the ground. Dean Stanfield sold it, safety was choreographed within an inch of its life, and that is all the detail you get, because the moment plays better cold.

Double duty

A shoutout to Daniel Freeberg, who has the strangest job on this production. He is a producer on ODIE, and he also plays Moose, the guy in the too-small shirt. So today he alternated between solving producer problems at video village and being in the shot the problems were about. There is a long indie tradition of producers who act and actors who produce, and Daniel is upholding it with a straight face, which is more than I could manage.

My favorite texture of the day: the background. Bartholomew Park, right across the street, came with its own cast, disc golfers arcing shots over the treeline and the roller-rink crowd doing laps behind the frame, and the film simply absorbed them. Austin playing itself, no direction required.

Tomorrow we barely move: the next location is a few blocks over, same corner of town, and that was not an accident. Somebody planned this schedule with a map in one hand.